


Penitent

by Charis



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: (it’s kind of mandatory with these two), Accidental Kink Discovery, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Begging, Breathplay, Coming Untouched, Cunnilingus, Dom/sub, Established Relationship, F/M, Femdom, Guilty Athos, Hair-pulling, Implied Consent, Malesub, Masturbation, Mild Comeplay, Naked Male Clothed Female, Not Season/Series 03 Compliant, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Overstimulation, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, Post-Season/Series 02, Praise Kink, Shame, Sub!Athos, Under-negotiated Kink, dom!Milady
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-14
Updated: 2016-12-14
Packaged: 2018-09-08 12:59:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8846026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charis/pseuds/Charis
Summary: “Five years you were faithful to my memory. Five years, but I leave for a week and you cannot even keep your hands off yourself.”
It is time to make amends.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zedrobber](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zedrobber/gifts).



> Birthday present for the wonderful Zed, who wanted “subby slutboy Athos”. I’m still not entirely convinced I hit that second adjective but this kind of ran away on me so. XD Happy birthday, darling! <333
> 
> Set nebulously sometime after Season 2. Thanks to Rose and Swellie for sanity checking and bouncing ideas.

The wood is hard beneath his knees; he has lost track of how long he’s been waiting here, naked, hands at his sides and head bowed. His legs ache, but it is nothing to the pain of knowing he has failed her -- nothing to the disappointment that had been in her eyes when he confessed his error.

_“Five years you were faithful to my memory. Five years, but I leave for a week and you cannot even keep your hands off yourself.”_

Five years, but they had been different ones, empty and barren, and what had been necessary to get through his days then is unacceptable now. Five years beholden to her memory, but she is here in the flesh, real and warm and everything he had wanted even in his darkest moments, and it is the woman and not the memory he has given himself to. He is hers, hers down to his marrow, and to do what he did --

And so she has left him here -- to think about what matters, she had said -- and gone out, and so he waits and he waits and the shame that burns within him grows. He does not know where she has gone, does not know how long she will be, but after five years and more, he knows that for her he would wait an eternity, if that was what it took. For her, he would …

The sound of the door unlocking is thunderously loud in the silence he’s grown accustomed to, the thud of her bootheels as she strides across the wooden floor purposeful. He does not look up, remains motionless, waiting still. She will acknowledge him when she is ready.

It feels like another eternity before she stops in front of him. The hem of her skirt brushes his knees, heavy damask soft against his skin, and he wonders if perhaps he should bow his head and kiss it in supplication -- but she has not given him leave to act or speak and so he does nothing but breathe in and out, letting her presence wash over him, waiting for her words.

“Well,” she says, little more than a breath in the stillness, “it seems perhaps you _can_ be taught.”

He swallows at that, shivers a little at the reminder that he is yet due a deserved punishment, but keeps silent and does not otherwise move. She bends slightly, just enough to tilt his head up, and now he obeys the tacit command and looks at her. Her face is impassive, the same gentle disappointment still in her eyes, and his shame redoubles. He wants to beg for her forgiveness, but he can only look at her and hope she will give him a chance, let her see that he has learned, that he now understands --

“Tell me,” she says, and she always knows him better than he does himself, to know what he needs now, “what your error was.”

Not the act; that would be too easy of an answer, though it _had_ been a mistake all the same. He swallows again, licks his lips, gazes up at her. “I forgot that I am yours,” he says, as if it is as simple as that -- and perhaps it is, perhaps it has always been, because she is smiling now, just a little, and he lets out the breath he didn't realise he was holding.

“All of you,” she agrees as her hand caresses his cheek, warm and gentle and _oh_ , it is all he can do not to lean into the touch. He does not deserve it, but if she has chosen to give him this then surely he must, and when he turns his head just the slightest bit into her palm she does not pull away. “You swore it, and to learn what you had done … perhaps I did not make myself clear enough. Perhaps you need reminding, if you forget so swiftly.”

“I --” he begins, though he is not sure of what he means to say -- though he can feel the heat beginning to uncoil in him at the prospect of what she could do to drive the lesson home, he fears it will mean she will pull away, and _five years_ has left him feeling cold and alone and he wants her warmth more than he does the slow burn of arousal, more than anything else, wants --

She steps back, and he groans at the loss of contact as much as at slide of her skirts across his stirring cock, and she pauses before sighing, a sound that cuts him to the quick. “Let this be your lesson,” she says, and takes another step back. “Stand up.”

He does so with alacrity, swaying slightly on legs half-numb from kneeling. She moves in behind him, warm and solid, and he cannot quite stop himself from leaning back into her, reassuring himself that she is real. It had been terrifyingly easy to forget while she was gone, to wake to cold sheets and convince himself her presence had only been a dream, and it had made him weak, but with her here it seems foolishness that he could have ever doubted. He cannot doubt like this, not as she folds her arms around him and traces the lines of his body, and even if she purposefully avoids the cock which now bobs against his stomach it does not stop him from growing harder yet, aching, leaking, needing so much more -- of this, of her, and even having her here is not enough. He thinks he could know nothing but her for the rest of his days and still not slake his thirst.

“Your punishment,” she murmurs against his shoulder, “is that you may not come until I allow it.” No mention of consequences, but he knows they exist without having to be told, even if it’s hard to hold onto the implicit threat as her teeth graze his skin and her fingers pluck at his nipples. He had not realised how on-edge he was from waiting, how much he already needs her (but when has he not needed her, burned for her, wanted her with every fibre of his being?), but it seems as if it takes only the briefest of touches before he is moaning, begging -- begging, and she has not even touched his cock, and he cannot think how he survived without her, for the last week or for those five desolate years, cannot --

She does touch his cock now, one hand tight at the base and the other sliding across the crown. His eyes have fallen shut but they fly open again at the sound of her lips parting wetly; he cannot see what she is doing but his mind fills in the images, paints all too vividly the sight of her fingers dripping with his precome, her lips shiny as she licks them clean before brushing them across his skin once more. “No,” is all she says as she tightens her other hand, and as the arousal recedes he shudders all the more fiercely.

It feels like forever standing there, half-afraid his knees will give out, wholly afraid he will spend without her permission. Her fingers are deft and delicate on his skin, light touches that should not arouse him so intensely, but she knows him inside and out, knows him deeper and truer than even he knows himself, and she knows just how to touch and tease -- and knows just when to stop, until he is sweat-soaked, panting, his thighs and his stomach a mess from how he’s leaking and his throat raw from pleading. He wants it to end, desperate to know relief, and yet he wants it never to end, content to live forever pressed against the warmth of her body, content to be whatever she needs him to be, holding on just a breath or two longer if only to hear her tell him that he has done well. Somewhere in the midst of it all he bites down on his lip so hard that it bleeds, and she takes her hands away for what seems a torturous eternity before she coaxes her riding gloves between his lips, and the faint taste of her on them just pushes him that much closer.

“ _Don’t_ ,” she commands as his cock spasms, and he tries to fight it, digs his nails into his palms and bites down hard on the leather between his teeth, but he might as well strive to stop the tides from turning. Her hands are around him once more, soft and warm, and he cannot stop himself from thrusting into her grip, bucking, leaking. “Don’t you dare,” but the tide rises, swallows him up and pulls him under, and his desperate plea shatters into sobs of failure even as pleasure wracks his body in endless spasms.

He’s still apologising when his mind clears, and her touch is still there, though the pleasure is twisting into something else as her fingers continue to work him. “Please,” he begs, and his voice is cracked and raw, “please --”

“You’ve made it clear what you want most -- twice now.” Her voice is cool, and the disappointment in it hurts even more than her hands against too-sensitive flesh.

“I don’t --” he swallows down air, shudders, whimpers as a thumb slides across the head of his cock (too much, too much, the pleasure is excruciating with how sensitive he is, but he will always want more of her and he cannot bring himself to pull back), wiping away his seed. “I’m sorry -- god, please -- forgive me --”

“Quiet.”

The single word is low but sharp, a demand he obeys without thought. She pulls away and he bites back a whine as her warmth leaves him, but it’s only to come and stand before him. There is something in her eyes which makes him quail, all too aware of how he’s displeased her yet again, and it has him sinking to his knees without so much as a thought, bowing his head in wordless supplication, circling back to where they had been when this all began. She says nothing either, and for a moment he thinks she will deny him another opportunity at redemption, but then her fingers are there before him, still wet and musky with his own fluids.

His tongue darts out; he tastes them both together there, licks until all that's left is the salt of her skin, sucks her fingers into his mouth to capture any lingering evidence of his failings. She says nothing, might as well be carved from marble for all the reaction he gets, and when he looks up through his lashes to see if there’s anything on her face finds equally little reaction there. “What kind of soldier cannot obey even the simplest of orders?” she asks, and the shame cuts him to the quick. There is nothing in his life but to serve, to obey, and to fail at those things which make him who he is is unthinkable, and yet the spend drying on his skin and the painful throb of his overstimulated cock are unavoidable reminders of having done just that.

He must make some sound, because her hand curls into his hair, tugs his head back forcefully so he has to look at her. “And what,” she asks, “will you do to convince me you are truly sorry?” and he babbles out his response -- anything, god, anything for her, he is always and ever and entirely hers, and he will do whatever she bids of him, try even when his body betrays them both, and the momentary pain of the yank is quickly lost in pleasure as her fingertips rub against his scalp. “Anything, my darling?”

Anything should be a fool’s answer, and yet it is the only one he can give -- anything, because he trusts her with all that he is and can give her nothing less, and she’s smiling down at him and though the shame is still there some of the guilt eases. She is everything to him, and he cannot bear to disappoint her again.

She sinks down onto the edge of the bed, still fully clothed. He watches helplessly, wondering what she will do next, fingers itching to touch but knowing better than to do so. And she does nothing at first, just studies him in turn, with that strange soft smile that used to haunt his dreams, and she’s close, so close, but she might as well be leagues away when he cannot close the distance between them and she seems unwilling to do so just yet. And she has given him no task to earn her forgiveness, no sign of what to do, and so he forces his hands to relax against his thighs and bows his head and waits.

“Eyes on me.” The words are an unmistakeable command and his gaze snaps back up to her face. She’s undressing, and such a mundane act shouldn't make his breath catch in his throat but it does, the slow reveal of skin as she pulls hooks free and loosens lacing enough to leave his mouth dry. He had thought himself spent but his cock stirs with renewed interest, and he grits his teeth against the accompanying frisson of pain, still too sensitive and too sore to bear arousal. He focusses on her instead, follows the path of her hands with his eyes, watches her shed layers while revealing precious little, and the groan of frustration wins free before he can help himself.

She pauses in the act of unfastening her petticoats and the smile takes on an edge. “Problems?”

He swallows convulsively, swallows again as she stops what she’s doing and instead drags the fabric up -- watches (eyes on her, she had said, and he cannot disobey) as delicate lace and linen reveal the sleek black boots beneath. There’s something about the sight that speaks of her perfectly, something that makes him want to crawl to her, follow the path of her fingers up with his mouth, find the familiar warmth still concealed beneath, where fabric and leather alike give way to woman alone. And she knows -- god, she must know, because the crook of one finger beckons him closer and he hastens to obey, shuffles closer on his knees, closer, until her spread legs brush against his shoulders and he can almost feel her heat through her skirts and that same hand against his bare chest stops him. “Wait,” she says, and he stifles another groan and sits back on his heels, hardly daring to breathe.

The skirts climb higher, pale linen lifting over paler thighs. She shifts on the bed slightly, nudges his legs wide before lifting first one foot and then the other to rest atop them, trapping his hands in place while baring herself further to his hungry gaze. He drinks in the familiar sight, dark curls and the slick skin beneath, and _now_ he breathes, drags the scent of her sex deep into his lungs and feels a fresh wave of desire unfurl within him. Coming earlier had been meaningless; this, here, is what he wants, where he belongs, and he sways forward despite himself, desperate for more, but she just frees one hand and pushes him back until he is sitting upright again. “Wait,” she repeats, and this time it’s a warning. He knows he will not get another chance to make amends.

Her fingers are there before his lips; he opens for her, takes them in, sucks -- if this is all he will have of her then he will take it gladly, take anything she gives him, and even the faint taste of her skin is better than nothing, but she pulls them out all too quickly. The faint whine of protest dies before it even leaves his throat when she reaches between her legs, and soon spit-slick fingers glisten with other fluids as she touches herself, leaving him harder than ever and yearning to follow their path with his tongue. When she brings them back to his mouth he laps at them eagerly, needing to taste her, and she laughs, low and soft.

“Please,” he begs, lost in the scent of her so heady and close, chasing the taste of her across her palm, “please, let me --”

“No.” The word is stern; he cannot stop the dismayed whimper from tumbling free in response. “No, my darling, and you know why.”

And he does, he does -- he hasn’t earned that right, and he should have known better than to think he had, after his earlier failings. The shame returns, grows, guilt making his head swim and his limbs tremble; _anything_ , he had promised her, to make amends, but how can he give her anything when he fails at even the simplest of tests?

But he cannot help himself, and his body continues to betray him -- sways forward, drawn to her like iron to lodestone, only for her hand to stop him again. She rises, and his heart sinks, certain that this failure means the end, but when she steps away it’s only to indicate the bed with a nod. “On your back,” she bids, “hands at your sides,” and, unsure of what she has in mind but trusting her nonetheless, he obeys.

She has shed her petticoats when she follows him back to the bed, and as she settles atop him tantalising flashes of skin peek out from between the top of her boots and the hem of her chemise. She sinks down onto his chest, knees drawn up, and the breath whooshes out of him less at her weight and more at the sight of her, pink and swollen and glistening and god, what he wouldn't give to taste, but like this all he can do is watch, wait, atone however she sees fit. And oh, he has had her kneeling above him before but she has never done this, and as her hand dips once more between her thighs his moan chases hers.

“Just think,” she says, and despite that moan and the slick sound of her fingers her voice is steady, almost calm. “If you had behaved yourself -- if you had exhibited a little self-restraint -- I might have let you do this for me. But you’ve left me no choice but to see to myself.” Her fingers are wet, the sounds they make as they slide through her folds almost obscene, and he strains despite himself, lifting his head off the pillow and craning his neck for a better look, hungry for more than the glimpses he’s catching.

It happens so quickly he scarcely has time to protest -- she moves faster than he would have imagined she might, slamming his head back against the pillow with a hand to his throat. “ _No_ ,” she growls, and her face is a breath away from his, and her fingers are tight, and --

He had dreamed this before; he had never thought to see it made real. His cock has gone from slowly stirring to aching, hard and hot and pulsing with a need wholly different from the cry of his lungs for air. He gazes up at her, mouth parting, trying to beg but unable to do so, trying to beg but unsure for what until she yanks her hand back as if burned, staring at him, wide-eyed and uncertain. Her lips form his name but no sound comes out.

“Please.”

He has said the word so many times tonight, by never like this -- cracked, raw, dragged from the depths of his being. He had dreamed, but he had dreamed so many things he would never seek in the waking world, and he had never realised just how deeply he wanted this, _needed_ this, until now. And when she just looks at him, her eyes still wild, he dares to reach for her hand and draw it back. “Milady,” he rasps out, less of the title it has been before now and more something soft, unexpected, “ _please_.”

She looks at him for a moment, a heartbeat, an endless eternity longer. Her eyes shutter, a slow blink; when she opens them again, they are clearer, steadier. “A fitting penance,” she says, before she sets her hand once more across his throat and leans in closer.

 _It's been too long,_ he thinks -- too long since they were this close, too long since he surrendered this fully, too long but there’s never been anyone else, not like this, closer than skin and driving the pulse of blood in his veins. He groans out the last of his breath and fights to keep his eyes fixed on her face, serene and remote as she pushes harder still, sends sparks of pleasure streaking across his vision and dancing along his nerves. There’s never been anyone else he could trust like this, for though she might break him into a thousand fragments who else knows him well enough to put him back together in the aftermath? (Who else, too, knows the pleasure that twines through the pain of shattering so exquisitely -- who knows the need and the sweet relief of it like she does, knows how it can be right and true and good despite how it may seem?)

Her face swims above him, fills his vision even as it blurs. It doesn’t matter; the scent of flowers has always been there even when he cannot breathe, and so too forever will be the softness in her eyes and the tight line of her mouth -- he doesn’t need to see her to know her, doesn’t need touch or hearing or breath to drown in her presence, dragged under once more as the world hazes, darkens, grows soft and quiet and still as she hovers close as a kiss. His fingers scrabble at the bedsheets underneath as his body fights against her weight, traitorous creature once again, but she has him pinned and he cannot win free, and he has no wish to as his mind floats, and all there is is her --

The air shuddering back into his lungs is a shock, his hungry gasp reflex alone, incomplete before the pressure returns to cut it short. He had dreamed this when he thought her dead, imagined her ghost where she is now, stealing his breath and sapping his will, and more often than not woken to damp eyes and damp sheets; small wonder that he should be perversely hard now, more desperate for her warmth than the air he needs to breathe. Small wonder, when life without her is nothing, that his lungs may burn but his hands strain not to push her away but rather to pull her impossibly closer. He throbs, aches, _needs_ , and he wants to rut up into her but he cannot find the strength to move, goes lax beneath her touch instead. It feels as if the only tension left in him is in the line of his cock, curving up like a brand against his stomach, burning all the hotter as she brushes against it. Anne, he begs, but there is no air in his lungs to give sound to his words and her name is merely the shape of his lips, _please, please, I need,_ and she’s right there above him but she might be a world away, and her lips brush his as she backs off just long enough to let him suck in air to give his desires a voice, smiles at his pleas before she cuts them short again.

She could keep him on this edge forever, shivering between the pulsing heat of his desire and the hazy softness of a world without breath -- could keep him here forever and he would let her willingly, when she is all he wants and all he needs. If he died like this it would be the sweetest death, and perhaps he might find forgiveness for some of his sins against her, but she will not give him that any more than she will let him tumble over, tells him he has earned neither, deserves neither. He aches with the strain of heeding her demands, muscles burning with more than the desperate need for air as he fights once more against his needs; this time the pleasure is slow and vast, suffuses him, kept at bay and yet encouraged by the burn of his lungs and the spots that dance across his vision. His head falls back, eyes shuttering as the world starts to fade, mouth dry and fingers cutting into his palms and he’s close, closer, and if he had breath it would be spilling from him in a desperate babbling litany --

“Yes,” she finally says, as if he had spoken aloud, and all it takes is that one word, just one syllable to have him arching, straining, painting his chest once again with his own spend and crying out as she gives him back his breath. _Yes_ , and it seems impossible not to do as she bids, and duty and pleasure intertwine, and her murmurs of praise just send him spiralling higher still until the world fades altogether around him.

He is limp with exhaustion when he comes back to himself; he barely has the energy to curl into the warmth of her body against his side. Through cracked lids he can see the smile that pulls at her lips, an oddly soft thing that nonetheless fits with the hand that strokes gently along his flank, easing him through the shuddering aftermath. He floats, her presence his only anchor, while his body remembers how to breathe and his limbs remember how to move, and only when he can find his voice again does he turn his head to lay in her lap. She huffs out an exasperated sound but permits it, fingers shifting into his hair. Each inhalation reminds him of how wet she still is beneath her chemise, reminds him of one more duty still left neglected, and he noses closer before her fingers tighten in warning.

“Please, milady.” An echo of before, but surely he has made amends by now -- surely she will allow him this service, this penance.

She yanks at his hair, draws his head back until he is forced to look at her. At first she says nothing, her expression one of consideration, but then the hand in his hair gentles and slips free, pets his cheek before joining her other to pull away that thin skin of linen, baring herself once again by slow, steady inches. “Good boy,” she murmurs, watching him watch her, and he is transfixed by the creep of fabric upward before it is cast aside, half-lost already in the scent of her desire, something he had never forgotten even in the darkest of days. “Come here,” and he goes willingly, finds the strength even in his weariness, because he will always want this, will always want _her_ , hot against his mouth, wet on his tongue. The sounds of her pleasure are muffled as he buries his head between her thighs but he applies himself to this task with newfound energy, because _this_ is what matters -- because nothing matters but pleasing her, because her pleasure is his, because he could die happily like this, drowning in her, suffocating if it only means giving her what she wants. He has wanted this from the beginning, and to be given it now, with her words of praise washing over him and her hands guiding him and her hips rolling and grinding up against his mouth, is everything. _She_ is everything, has always been and will always be, and small wonder his world has always seemed seemed diminished when she was not in it, when so much of that world is her.

He does not know how long it has been, does not know if she has peaked once or twice or more; all he knows is the darkness and the heat and the taste of her as she shudders and arches and cries out beneath him, and her voice is the sweetest sound he has ever known. Her fingers tighten in his hair to the point of pain as he continues to lap at her, wanting still more (always, always), and when she finally pushes him away he whimpers with the loss of it. “Enough,” she says, but it’s not a rebuke, and she’s still there with him, nails scratching lightly against his scalp and wetness soaked into his beard -- the taste of her still fills his mouth and his senses, perfumes every unsteady breath, and the tension leaches back out of him as she continues, “You’ve done so well for me, my darling -- so very well.”

The slow spreading warmth that follows her words is a reassurance, even as his spent cock tries valiantly to rally one last time. There is nothing left in him, though, scarcely enough energy to turn his head and nuzzle against her hand, but it’s a relief to lie there boneless, replete, all of his senses full of her. “So well,” she murmurs again, curling warmly around him, and he knows this won’t last, can’t last -- it never does, when the world and all of its demands wait just outside the door, and too soon he will have to be the captain again, the comte, the other things society demands of him. But not yet, and not in here, and so he relaxes into her warmth and her praises and her presence, closes his eyes, and simply breathes.


End file.
